The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1887-10-29

ven. At the age of twenty-seven disease
Of the ears afflicted him, gradually depriving
him of the sense of hearing In writing to |
friend at this time he says-"My hearing
has become gradually worse during the
last three years. My ears are buzzing and |
ringing perpetually, day and night. can
truly say my life is very wretched For
nearly two years pastII have avoided all
society, because find it impossible to say
to people l am deaf. In any other pro
fession such condition might be more tol-
cradle, but in mine it is truly frightful."
And it was frightful!
Indeed, the lives of several of the most
prominent musicians in history are replete
with incidents of the most melancholy char
acter Handel was blind; Haydn and
Mozart were constantly pinched by power
ty; Beethoven was deaf at twenty-seven,
and Schuman, man of indefatigable toll,
unhagging zeal, and possessed of noble
and generous disposition, finally succumbed
to disease of the brain, and died hope
less imbecile.
On the 26th of March, 1927, in the fifty
seventh year Of his age, Beethoven painfully
died during severe storm Of thunder and
lightning.
In attempting to speak Of the results of
his genius, one can hardly help feeling an
incompetence. Wagner, the greatest of
modern composers, said that after he
| (Beethoven) had written his ninth sym
phony the realm of purely instrumental
music was exhausted. One who has heard
his symphonies played by competent
orchestra will feel inclined to think as did
Wagner. He wrote his finest works after
he was nearly totally deaf. He composed
nine symphonies that excel anything that
had gone before or have come after as the
sun excels the stars. He discarded the
stereotyped rules of composition and made
his own rules, and everybody had to be
silent for he was superior to everybody.
What Shakespeare was to literature
Beethoven was to music, and one might
with as little propriety attempt an adverse
criticism of Beethoven as of Shakespeare.
Indeed, do not know but that pages of
Shakespeare might with greater temerity
be ridiculed than pages of Beethoven, for,
while the writer of Hamlet had his faults,
the composer of the Fifth Symphony never
had any.
Beethoven was a moody, silent, reserved
man, his nature, unlike the cheerful, open
hearted, lovable nature of Mozart, possess
ing none of the old-fashioned courtesy Of
Haydn, or the winning magnetism of Men
delssohn, was wrapped up in self-commun-
ings. He had few friends and no intimate
associates. He was not appropriately ap-
preciated till dead, as very few understood
him, and even those few were repelled by
his peculiarities of manner Beethoven
possessed more subjective nature than did
his great predecessors, and his tone forms
are filled with much deeper emotions, the
inheritance, as Ritter says, of a great soul
formed amidst struggles, hopes and sorrows.
1t is fact that | have never seen noted
elsewhere but nevertheless fact, that the
movements of his piano sonatas that emhody
the most of majesty, dignifed sorrow and
a seeming hope for future happiness, arc in
four or five flats keys best suited to emo
tions of that order. Mozart's best piano
works, on the contrary, are in sharps. The
key of D seemed fayorite with him.
It is pleasant in summer time, in walking
through a meadow dotted with daisies and
dandylions, to come across stream of
clear water, bubbling and hurrying on its
way to join some larger stream. The grass
along its banks is greener, the skies above
it seem deeper blue than elsewhere. One
may have happy thoughts here, and yet feel
sorrow hard to define. There is rest
about it, and as you sit in meditative silence
all the bright images of the past come
thronging up, and tears rise to the eyes with
the thought that future days and friends
and affections will not have all the joy
and gladness that have been found in days
past, and in the old familiar faces now
hidden under mounds of earth.
But when you stand on one of the bluffs
of the Hudson river and note the majestic
flow of its waters, resistlessly, surely pressing
on to the goal, coming down from the rocky
Businesses of the Adirondacks as though
triumphant over many sorrows and tribula-
tions and successful in its mission, all
thoughts of past joys and sorrows fade
away, and in their place comes an emula-
ton of the mighty river, a desire to rise
above petty ills, to be noble and good, and to
accomplish glorious destiny. The mea-
dow stream is Mozart and the great river
Beethoven.
CHOPIN.
Chopin was mild, unobtrusive man, re-
served, nervous, stunning notoriety, and
loving music for its own sake. A Pole by
birth, his musical efforts possess the pecu-
liarities we would naturally expect to see
come from that sad and oppressed yet fiery
hearted people. His finest works are in
minor keys. The gayety and freedom that
are expressed by the broad and open char
acter of major chords and passages were
entirely foreign to his nature. His pre-
ference ran toward the sad and plaintive,
sometimes so intensely sorrowful as to be
almost painful to the listener. His hap
piest efforts were in his embodiment in
artistic form Of the national airs, the folk
songs of the Poles. His maxurkas, of
which he wrote over half hundred, are
peculiarly national in their character But
even the mazurkas, with all their wealth
of beautiful feeling and fancy, are inferior,
if such thing be possible, when compared
with his nocturnes. In this last named
form of composition he stands alone. The
nocturne may be described as form of
piano work of serious and meditative style,
more suited, from its very seriousness, to
the minor key 1t had been brought to
some degree of excellence by Fields, who
wrote several famous numbers. But Chopin,
with his wonderful poetic invention and in
exhaustible vein of melody, breathed into
it an animation, a brilliancy, luxuriance
that it had never before possessed, His
nocturnes contain the quintessence of poeti-
cal feeling. They do not require abrilliant
and dashy execution. A suitable manipu-
lation of the sustaining pedal aud a quiet
dexterity of the fingers may be mentioned
as necessary to their proper performance.
For their proper Interpretation an intelli-
gent musical mind is necessary, alive to the